mistletoe and wine
by Ash Light
Summary: "But maybe just once a year, when they take a break from all the shouting and cursing and fighting, it can work for them." The holiday season is a time for friendship, love, laughter and, most particularly, hope. Twenty-six Christmases spanning the years, with a whole host of characters. Marauder-era to post HPB.


Disclaimer: The wondrous JKR, of course, owns all.

Title: mistletoe and wine

Summary: "Christmas is the time you say it, isn't it?" Twenty-six Christmases; twenty-six not-so-short drabbles.

Notes: I think I already miss Christmas...And writing HP fic... Quality of the drabbles varies depending on who is featured.

-o-

**a: - angel**

He's a prefect_._ A bloody – if you'll excuse his language – _prefect_, thank-you, not a _pinhead_ or a _poser_ or a _prick_ or whatever else his oh-so funny brothers decide to hex his badge to read; a _prefect_. And Dumbledore, despite the occasional doubts one might have about the headmaster's sanity, chose him for the job, which jolly well means he's going to do it. Dumbledore trusts him to do to the job to the best of his ability, which means patrolling the corridors, supervising the first years, even putting his own brothers in detention if he has to – and if the price for such responsibility is that Fred and George slip Dungbombs in his bed from time to time, well then, so be it. Someone has to do it.

Nonetheless, the day Percy wakes up to see a fresh blanket of snow smothering the castle grounds, as thick as sugar and almost heavy with promise, something very _un-prefect _flips inside of him.

He skives decorating the castle with Filch just to run outside and lie there, feeling flakes of snow kiss his lips and his eyelashes; waving his arms and legs until a whole fleet of snow angels surround him. He's soaked through to the skin, has a cold for a week and is late for Charms, but it's definitely worth it.

**b: - beauty**

Some people ask – with more than the hint of a sneer in their voice – why on _earth_ should Molly Weasley bother herself with trying to raise Harry Potter as some sort of seventh son, for pities' sakes she already has birthed more children than should be decent to have, and _really_, is this scruffy patched-up poor housewife the right person to mother the Boy Who Lived, the saviour of the wizarding world? She always shakes her head; Harry needs a mother, she is more than amply qualified to look after him, poor dear. She's never pressed further than her due, always let him have his space, but sometimes when she sees him coming off the Hogwarts Express, so skinny and lost and very, very young, she just opens her arms to him, because there's always room for one more.

Here they stand, just her and Harry, bent over the kitchen table. Ron and Ginny are having some sort of _howling_ argument upstairs, something to do with 'Hermione' and 'Lavender sodding Brown' and whatever nonsense they're getting into this week; Harry advises her with a grin to stay well out of it and continues piping icing onto the gingerbread men. She crafts a girl with beautiful long hair for Ginny, a figure in Quidditch robes for Ron, even one holding a scoodriver or whatever Muggle rubbish it is for Arthur. His attempts are clumsy, but good-natured; figures with pink hair, blue lips, wildly dazzling clothes. After a while, however, Molly can't help but notice a certain pattern in his figures: red hair and green eyes, black hair and hazel eyes, red hair and green eyes...

"Do you think they'd be proud of me?" comes his voice, just once, and directed more towards the clumsily decorated ginger-woman than to her.

For a moment she feels a wild stab of something akin almost to jealousy deep inside of her: she is nothing more than a surrogate, a shadow on the wall, a poppet to distract him from his loss. Lily Potter is bright and shining and forever young in his eyes; while she is some worn and tired shade.

And then the feeling passes, drowned in her shame: Lily Potter is dead, and she is alive, with a beautiful husband and seven wonderful children, and this sweet boy standing before her and making gingerbread men. The air is crisp with spices and alight with the glitter of the baubles strung up all around the kitchen; the oven soaks the room in warmth. Up above them comes a shriek of laughter, her children's quarrels never last long. Their home is, suddenly, quite beautiful. She has so much to be thankful for, so much, and while she cannot somehow find the words to speak, she touches her flour-stained fingers to his cheek to say yes, yes you wonderful boy, how could they not be proud of you, just the way you are right now?

**c: - chance**

Gregory Goyle is more than aware that he's a dim-witted, slow, bumbling dope of a boy who couldn't so much as find a bar of chocolate in Honeydukes and no girl will ever, _ever_ fancy – mainly because Draco makes a point of telling him this on a weekly basis whenever he gets bored, and he's heard it so often it's probably the truth. And he's perfectly happy with this, in his own way, because even though he's roughly the same weight and build as a mountain troll there's something about girls' giggling that makes him very, very nervous. This conviction lasts him all the way until their fifth year, when he enters the Great Hall to see Millicent Bulstrode sitting unknowingly beneath a sprig of mistletoe, and suddenly all he can think is '_Um..._'.

Actually, this isn't technically true. There are plenty of other thoughts that unexpectedly fill his mind, all of which make him red-faced and awkward and clumsy. Even more so than usual.

Oh God. Oh God. Does she _know_ she's sitting there? Does she _know_ he's watching, does she maybe _want_ him to see her? Does she know that he knows that she knows he's watching? And if so, does she know that _he_ knows that _she _knows that...Oh God, this is just too confusing. He's only mildly aware that his feet are practically stuck to the floor, staring without thought, oh God, if only he could ask Draco what to do - but then Draco would probably laugh and make some crack about comparing Milly to Babayaga again...even though Gregory can't help but think that in her own way Milly's the prettiest girl in the whole school...

"Come on, you great lump, move it!"

He stumbles back to attention, lumbering – he's never felt more clumsy, more troll-like – after Draco, who manages to sit at the table for roughly two seconds before Pansy flings her arms around his neck. And Milly – Milly looks up, gives them all a nervous grin, and leaves, with the mistletoe and an empty seat remaining.

Draco's right. He _is_ a great lump, and a waste of space besides.

Still, he can't help thinking - with a sudden stab of optimism that he very, very rarely experiences – it's Christmas, isn't it? Everybody says that's the season of miracles, and you never know, there's always the possibility of a second chance.

**d:- daredevil **

"I don't like this. Can we go back already?"

"_Honestly_ Ron, it's not so difficult. Look, if you just apply your mind – "

"Apply your mind, apply your mind! That's all you ever come out with, you do. This isn't some bloody N.E.W.T standard Transfiguration essay or anything like that Hermione, this is sliding down a socking great hill with only two pieces of wood and two twigs – yes, that's right, I said it, _twigs_ – to keep you from plunging to some horrible misshapen death."

"...Ron. It's skiing. Five year old Muggles manage this every day of the year. It's the Christmas holidays, I wanted to do something special!"

_A Look._

"Oh, I'm sorry, would you rather I said: 'Oh, Ronald, you're my hero, all your other valiant deeds against Voldemort and his followers just _pale_ in comparison to this!'?"

"...Yes, actually. Yes I would."

"Well I won't. Not until you make it down the training slope anyway. Now come on, just lean forward and – "

"Hermione, I'm moving. Why am I moving, I don't want to be moving – Hermione, it won't stop, I – _It won't bloody stop! _Hermione why are you laughing? _Hermione stop laughing and help me stop slipping down this bloody hill, HELP!_"

**e:- extenuation**

For the first seven months there is nothing. Only silence.

For her own part, Andromeda cannot help but be grateful. When the baby is sleeping she has nothing to distract her from the undeniable fact that this house – this once warm and happy place – is silent, as silent as the grave, and empty of nothing but faded ghosts. There are no owls to bring fresh news and gossip from the Ministry, no discarded clothes, no half-burnt pieces of toast lingering on bookshelves. Sometimes she thinks, just for a second, that she can hear Ted's off-key whistle from some other part of the house, but it's nothing. Only silence. Sometimes Harry comes, to visit his godson. She forces herself to look away when he plays with Teddy, because she knows from past experience just how corrosive a look can be. She has to bite her tongue from demanding of him: _Why them? Why not you?_

And through all of this, she has her memories to keep her company: Bellatrix's spit striking Ted's cheek the first time she brought him to the house, Narcissa's brittle silence as she begged her younger sister to write. The numerous owls returning her letters, unopened. The day Kingsley Shacklebolt came to her door and told her that her husband was dead. Molly Weasley holding her as they spoke of how her eldest sister had murdered her only child. And nothing. Nothing from Narcissa. Nothing for over twenty-five years. She almost thinks she will never be able to bear seeing her sister ever again.

Almost.

It's a cold Christmas Eve when the eagle owl arrives, pure white and perching atop her kettle with an unmistakeably haughty look. She opens the parcel with slow, cautious fingers; it's not an owl of anyone she knows.

When the wrapping finally gives it's a single, solitary shape that tumbles out into her open hands: white, small, unbearably soft. Fur that's been well worn by age and has soaked up more tears than either she or Bellatrix were ever permitted to know. Eyes that are solemn and aged. She can still remember her little sister dancing through the house, hand in paw with Little Ted, even when all her other toys had been discarded or banished.

And signed on the paper is a single, solitary letter.

_N._

She stares back into the teddy-bear's eyes until hot tears blur her own.

**f: - firsts**

This is going to be a brilliant Christmas. Or would be, if it wasn't for the fact that his father wasn't completely _psychotic._

Rose tries to take some of the credit for having completely dysfunctional parents – 'Easy for you to say, isn't it Rosie? What did my parents name me again? _Scorpius Hyperion_! That's right! And Mum _says_ she tried to change it to something even remotely normal, but she was laughing too much when she said it for me to trust her...' – but he's not sure it makes him feel much better. Christmas is supposed to be a time of joy and celebrations and family embracing one another; _not_ watching Dad and Ron shoot each other glares that could fell a Basilisk from across the room.

It's their first Christmas together as a newly married couple. Someone who has had to restrain their father from casting a Trip Jinx on his _fiancée's_ dad, as he walked her down on the aisle _on his sodding wedding day,_ should not have to endure this kind of tension.

"Honestly Rosie, I wouldn't worry about it," Hermione murmurs one evening as he passes around drinks. "It'll get easier, you just wait and see."

Mum's slightly less nonchalant about the whole thing.

"Your dad's always been a stubborn little git, Scorp," she drawls, squeezing Rose's elbow and winking at him. "But if he doesn't get his act together by tomorrow I'll start browsing through _Bewitch Your Friends and Befuddle Your Enemies__ while he's watching, that usually gets him nervous."_

It all comes to a head on the evening of Christmas Eve when Dad comes in to see Mum holding her wand in a particularly meaningful manner and giving him a dark look. His cheeks flush.

"Christ, not this again! Look, 'Tor, it's my business if I don't want to talk to Weaselbee, and if you lot can't cope with that – " He briefly glowers at Scorpius, at Mum, at Hermione and Rose, before twitching as the floorboards in the hall creak. "_God_, if I have to spend one more evening with that bloody little – you know what, I'm going under – " And to the surprise of everyone, he dives beneath the dining room table for safety.

"Draco, are you completely – "

The tablecloth flits huffily back into place just as Ron enters the dining room. Rose hastens forward.

"Dad, I've been meaning to talk to you – "

Ron flushes bright red. "You as well? Bloody hell Rosie, I've already gone through this with your mother, I am _not_ being sodding polite to Malfoy, I don't care how many times the two of you glare at me! And if you lot have such a bloody issue with that, then I," he grasps the tablecloth hanging over their dining room table, "shall just sit under here," raises it, "and let you all have dinner without me, how about that?"

"Dad, I really think you should – " But no, he's already gone. And then silence, the kind of silence that Scorpius is pretty sure comes from two men coming face to face with each other and realising there is no way they can escape from each other's company without looking like utter fools. A very..._present_ silence.

Hermione and Mum stand there, tapping for their feet and waiting for them to resurface. He's pretty sure they're going to be waiting a while. Because if he's perfectly honest, the one thing both Dad and Ron hate more than each other, it's returning to their wives after being complete prats and having to admit that they are...well, complete prats.

The silence continues. Rosie's grinning.

"...Weasley, there was a bowl of peanuts on top of the table. Mind passing it down here?"

A freckled hand slowly – sheepishly - emerges from beneath the tablecloth, feels around for several painstaking minutes, before re-submerging itself, accompanied by peanuts. The sound of crunching arises from beneath their dining room table.

Scorpius massages his temples and wonders, not for the first time, if it's not too late to be adopted.

**g :- green fingers**

It's a wrench giving her up, but it's the best idea Neville can think of. Oh, Gran rolls her eyes when he – theoretically – runs the idea past her, and Seamus has to actively stuff his fist into his mouth to prevent himself from laughing, but – well. Luna agrees with him on this, and Luna's ideas aren't half bad.

Other things – jewellery, perfume, chocolates – all seem somehow fake and contrived and tacky, the sorts of things that would make him feel even more like a clumsy fool just presenting them. This is – _she_ is – the only thing that is really – and truly – him.

Besides, Herbology's where it all started, wasn't it? The first place he saw her – even if, back then, she just seemed like another shy, awkward child who liked plants. Just like him.

It's with some trepidation that he presents his prized, flowering, fully-grown _Mimbulus mimbletonia_ to Hannah Abbot in the snow outside the Three Broomsticks, but the smile on her face is enough to quell any doubts. And when the dratted thing drenches them both in Stinksap... well that's even better.

**h: – humbug**

Arthur's heard some people dub the Inter-Departmental Secret Santa some pretty unflattering terms over the years. Not this wizard though! Not Arthur Weasley! He is set, prepared and ready for anything! Armed only with the _Flourish and Botts_ new best-seller on a history of the Dark Arts, he marches happily down through the maze of corridors and offices of the Ministry, confident and secure in the knowledge that this time he has done the near impossible: he has the perfect gift for Alastor 'Mad-Eye' Moony. And this warm glow lasts within him all the way down the corridor, right up until he reaches Mad-Eye's office and reaches for the stocking hanging on the doorknob.

"Here we go – _ARGH_!"

_Some wizards_, he will later recall feeling as he is flung, almost gracefully, back through the air and into an entire wall of filing cabinets by the force of the explosion, _**some**__ wizards don't consider it necessary to booby-trap their Christmas stockings._

From his rather crumpled position on the floor, now covered in reports concerning Dark Magic activity in Eastern Russia, he hears the door open. "Oh, it's you Arthur." He can hear the swivel of Mad-Eye's eye as it scans the – slightly singed – present still clutched in his hands. "Ah, Herbert Schwimpling's _A History on the Hundred Most Feared and Revered Dark Wizards in this Millenia_ – yes, I'll enjoy that Arthur, thank-you."

"Alastor, you _really _have to get into the Christmas spirit," he groans wearily.

Mad-Eye lifts his head unrepentantly. "Course I don't. I made it shoot stars, didn't I?"

Arthur finds himself pitying whatever unsuspecting witch tries to post Mad-Eye a Valentine's card next year.

**i:- introduction**

It's Bellatix he notices first; already a fourth year when he arrives at Hogwarts, black-eyed and dark-haired and hopelessly glamorous. For four years he watched the oldest Black girl hungrily from across the Slytherin common room, never granting her pale waif of a sister more than a second glance – until his parents' annual Christmas party of his sixth year.

According to family legend, the only reason Lucius Malfoy even looked twice at Narcissa Black was because she was blocking his view of a simply gorgeous brunette exchange student from Beauxbatons across the room. He will make sure to tell this story at regular intervals, which hides the very real truth that the moment he steps into his parents' hall and sees her standing there talking to Rosier and Avery, long blonde hair shimmering in the candlelight and pale blue robes clinging to every slender curve of her body, he spills a bowl of soup straight down his front.

The boys snigger. She doesn't, but steps forward, wand raised, and neatly sluices the mixture from his robes.

"Brains and beauty; what a combination," he drawls quickly, to distract her from his embarrassment.

Her blue eyes sparkle, ever so slightly. "I do try."

This cannot be – _cannot_ be – the same wisp of a girl who used to perch in the common room for hours at a time without saying a word to anyone, without being able to make eye-contact with anyone older than her? This creature cannot be the same person, surely? When did he look away, how could he _possibly_ have looked away, and missed seeing her grow up into – into this?

"How have I never noticed you before?" he questions, and for once it isn't a line.

He knows, straight away in the pit of his stomach, that this is the girl he is going to spend the rest of his life with when she meets his eyes head on and replies: "Because you've been ogling my sister all this time?"

A year later he gives her a ring that's as cold as her skin and as beautiful as her face; when he presents it to her amidst the snow and the icicles of his parents' garden she smiles. The words '_pretty little trophy wife'_ and '_conservation of the blood'_ are bandied around within his hearing, often accompanied by nudges and winks. He doesn't see the point of disabusing the masses of their misguided notions – doesn't even tell her the truth. Let them all think she's just a pretty decoration, a suitable breeding-partner. This knowledge is just for him.

He keeps the secret safe within him, that Narcissa is the best gift he could ever be given.

**j:- jester**

You think, sometimes, that this is all just a practical joke, a bad dream conjured from the deepest fears that lurk in the dark corners of your mind. You think, each day as you wake up, that today will be the day your eyes open and he's already there, laughing at you with that bloody stupid laugh and pointing at you, _Merlin, Georgie, did you ever really think I'd leave, did you really believe I'd leave __**you**__ to fend for yourself, Lugless, how the hell are you going to hear people even __**talk**__ without me to help you?_ You see Mum and Dad and Ron and Percy and Ginny all stifle tears and shake their heads and you find yourself wanting to burst out laughing because honestly, don't they get the joke, don't they know that Fred's going to walk in the door any second, that he'd never leave them, he'd never leave _you_?

A Healer from St. Mungos talks at length about phantom pain. Sometimes, when Percy says something particularly pompous, you can hear Fred laughing.

You scour the shops for weeks on end, trying to find the perfect gifts. You write his card, and make sure to pick the one with the most inappropriate, pathetic joke on the front, because those are the kind Fred likes. You hang up his stocking right next to yours, and lay out two mince pies – one from Fred, one from you.

You pour two glasses of Firewhiskey and toast the coming New Year with your dead brother. After all you – who still felt your ear itching a month after Snape blasted it clean from your skull – have no aversion to the company of ghosts.

**k:- kaleidoscope **

He doesn't know how to feel. Well no, he does, he knows how he _should_ feel – this is his parents' grave after all, and he's the hero, this should be the moment when he feels destiny and honour and all those stupid empty words that people use to put glamour on bloodshed – but he doesn't. He doesn't know quite what he feels.

Pain. Hope. Grief. Love. Despair. Anger. That unmistakeable feeling that somehow he's been cheated.

The Muggle lights glimmer softly over them from across the road, sending patterns of red and green and gold swimming over his face; the sound of a ground of carollers is muted and, he realised as he lets the sound wash over them, oddly sweet. His first Christmas, did his parents hold him in their arms to watch the same pretty colours, to listen to the same music? Did they whisper to him, tell him how much fun they were going to have, how many wonderful Christmases they were all going to have – together?

Christmas is the time you say it, isn't it?

"I loved you," he whispers, and the words fill his throat, nearly choking him. Hermione moves away on the pretence of examining some other grave; he's grateful for that, that she knows this moment is just between him and them. "I really did. And one...and one day I'm going to tell you that. Properly. But not just yet; I have to keep fighting now. For you."

He's almost certain that they hear him.

**l:- lucky**

Azkaban's poison drapes itself over her like the web of a spider, delicate and toxic all at once. Time itself has very little meaning here, in this great dark otherworld, but she hears the screams of a new prisoner, pathetic, mewling pleas, – '_Oh God please no, please don't, it's Christmas, I have to see my family, I have to see them, please!' _– and so Yuletide it must nearly be. Whatever joy is in the world does not reach them here. It means nothing. Silly little Muggle toys, silly foolish little Muggle celebrations, anything to distract them from the empty filth of their own stunted lives. She never celebrated it, never, Christmas was not brought into the Lestrange household; all she could do was count the hours and wait for the day she could kiss His robes and be near Him again.

They say her cousin has escaped.

Some of the more coherent ones – _she thinks she herself might be a little bit mad, just a little, but not like these filth, not like these lesser beings that drool and gibber and deserve everything they've lost for abandoning her master – _they laugh and congratulate her; they tell her she should be proud. Her cousin, the man who turned over the Potters, escaped.

She doesn't laugh. She isn't proud. Her cousin might have been many things, but dear, sweet, brave Sirius was always too _honourable_, too _noble_ to ever betray his friends.

They praise him when they should revere her. The woman who waited for the Dark Lord.

One day, she muses as she twists the cobwebs and loose strands of her own hair around her fingertips and over her lips, one day, she will give dear Sirius the Christmas present he does not expect.

**m:- makeover**

Despite the fact that Astoria would characterise Pansy's natural state as being one of a complete and utter _bitch_, she sometimes isn't all that bad.

The exact moment Daphne announces that Eddie Carmichael has asked her little sister to Sluggy's Christmas party Pansy grasps the younger girl by both arms and frog-marches her out of the Great Hall, while Astoria helplessly flings her friends a look that one might use in, say, a hostage situation. She is marched ceremonially through the castle, to a particular wall and then – all the while wondering why in heaven's name she never got her will sorted out in time – is directed into the sixth year girl's dormitory, sat down on the bed and informed that she will not be allowed to leave this room until – and this is a direct quote, mind – 'she is looking even half-way close to human'.

There's a slight glint to the older girl's eye which indicates this may not be an idle threat.

So she sits there, rather helpless, while Aphrodite Rivers digs out one of many dresses she – having snared boyfriends from Durmstrang, Beauxbatons and the Ministry all at once – no longer has a use for, and older girls trade gossip that, if half of it were true, would be deeply horrifying, not to mention downright scarring, to listen to. Girl world, it seems, is a dark and terrifying place. And that's even before her sister digs out the Sleekeazy's.

"You know, I actually like my hair like this..."

Pansy narrows her eyes in a manner that would terrorise the larger species of dragon.

"...But I am wrong."

When they're done with her the girl in the mirror wears sleek silver dress robes that glisten like water in the candlelight; not a single hair on her head is out of place. She barely recognises herself. Eddie Carmichael cannot stop complementing her all the way up to Slughorn's office.

All this is nothing to the moment when Draco storms back into the party, robes still askew from where Filch had apparently wrestled him into submission – which, she can't quite help but feel, will take some beating as her new favourite Christmas memory of all time – and catches sight of her. Astoria _thinks_ his jaw slackens open wide enough to catch a Snitch. It's difficult to be sure, however, owing to the fact that in the next three seconds he continues walking straight into Slughorn's bookshelves and knocks a very heavy encyclopaedia of potions ingredients onto his head. It's somewhat bizarrely satisfying.

She wonders if she should thank Pansy, before realising there is no way in the whole wide world that Pansy Parkinson will want to be thanked for _that._

**n:- netherworld**

"Ye've done all the best you can, Professor. Yeh stayed when not many would, and yeh protect the children against those murderin' Carrows. There's nothin' else anyone can ask of yeh."

Dumbledore always trusted Hagrid's judgement and so, Minvera has long ago decided, should she. Nonetheless, she can only wonder as the train slowly pulls from the station and disappears into a haze of fog and snow, how many of those children are scarred, inside or out, because of her inaction? How many of them cry into their pillows, or flinch at shadows, because of something she has not done. And how many, how many of them will return to Hogwarts when the holidays end? How many will be kept back with their frightened parents, forced to flee from masked faces – or even worse?

She is slow in walking back to the castle. Once upon a time it would be filled to the rafters with tinsel and baubles and Christmas trees, and suits of armour singing out-of-tune Christmas carols, and noise and joy and laughter and all those things that made her struggle not to smile. Now – well, she doesn't know quite what that castle is anymore, but it isn't Hogwarts, not the Hogwarts she knows.

**o:- outcasts**

Figures. Why didn't he expect it? Of _course_ Harry's going to want to spend Christmas with the Weasley's; what kind of alternative was he hoping for? That he was going to come _here_? Merry bloody Christmas that would be, wouldn't it – _Go on Harry, hang some more tinsel over dear old Aunty Belvina, she used to hang Muggles up by their toenails, you know..._

Still, there's a blazing heat in the pit of Sirius' stomach that has, for once, nothing to do with his family's disgusting proclivities. Christmas at the Weasley's _again_, when most likely he's been going there every since his first year at Hogwarts; Molly's had him for five bloody years and she couldn't give him up just once, God, and some of the laughs they could have gotten up to in here, some of the mischief...

Christ, maybe Moony's right. He _is_ starting to see more of James in the boy, every time he looks at him.

Sulkily he hangs the last wreath over the window, whereupon Buckbeak begins to eat it.

"You're right, of course. It's ugly as hell," he drawls, and receives a beady glare in return. "Shut up. Don't look at me like that, I'm his _godfather._ It's perfectly natural to want some bloody company. Who else am I going to talk to, you?"

When Buckbeak doesn't answer, he places a paper hat at a rakish angle over the beast's head. The hippogriff, in a fit of unprecedented yuletide spirit, demurs from chewing it.

Alright. Maybe he feels a little bit better now.

**p: - purgatory**

He is well aware that his sojourn as a Death Eater might prompt the Powers That Be to fling some sort of cosmic punishment in his direction. It's only to be expected. But nothing, repeat, _nothing_ that he might have done under the direction of the Dark Lord merits the unworldly horror of being trapped under the mistletoe with Sybil Trelawney.

And that is all he has to say on the subject, thank you very much.

**q:- quest**

"You got the net with you, George?"

"'Course I have. You don't think I'd forget something like that, do you?"

"Alright alright, keep your voice down. Don't want to wake anyone else up."

"And don't you go to sleep like you did the last time, eh?"

"Get off! When I woke up last year you were the one snoring like a pig. _I _stayed up all night...but I'll never tell you what I saw..."

"Yeah, yeah. Just you keep an eye on that fireplace."

_Deathly silence_.

"Bloody daft thing to do anyway, come down a chimney. Wouldn't a broomstick suit him better?"

"Freddy, you have no soul."

"Well, I'm just saying..."

"Look, all we have to do is wait here until he comes and then...d'you reckon it's truly in keeping with the Christmas spirit to capture Father Christmas with a very large stick?"

"Hey, I'm willing to let him go. Just as long as our presents are better than Percy's."

_Further deathly silence, punctuated by the sudden creaking of floorboards._

"Hang about, I think I hear something – "

"Quick! Throw it! _Throw it_!"

"_**FREDANDGEORGE!"**_

"...Merry Christmas, Mum?"

**r:- rapprochement **

Ron Weasley is – she has to think it, because if she doesn't then apparently no-one else will – a complete and utter, clueless, witless, oblivious _arse_. He's spoilt everything. _Everything_.

Of _course_ she was going to the ball with Viktor; did he expect her to just _wait_ around for him to ask her? Would she have been justified in throwing a complete hissy fit right in the middle of the castle in front of _everybody else_ if he'd gone with that ridiculous Fleur Delacour? She doesn't think so. And why _shouldn't_ she go out with Viktor? He's very nice, he's a perfect gentleman and incredibly sweet, and if looking at him doesn't bring about the same half-flicker of something queer and delicious in the pit of her stomach that looking at...well, _certain people_ does, well then that's just...that's just...

She rolls over and pummels her pillow in a half-despairing sort of way, because that has to be better than sobbing into it.

Funny thing is, however, that when she comes down the stairs the next morning, wan and red-eyed, it's to see Ron standing there in the middle of the common room – blushing so hard it does quite look as though his head's on fire – with a very poorly wrapped present clutched in front of him like some sort of shield. He sort of shoves it in her hands while mumbling something that cannot possible be construed as anything remotely resembling English; and when she unwraps it, out tumbles two old, tatty, hand-worn books – the kind she loves - from _Obscurus Books_ and a very soft, very pretty scarf. Which can only lead her to muse that while Ron Weasley is a complete and utter, clueless, witless, oblivious _arse_, he may, in time, possibly be getting there.

**s:- santa baby**

She is, he reminds himself on a near-daily basis, completely and utterly ludicrous.

It's an oddly comforting thought to have as he watches the fire dance and twist before his eyes, lying side-by-side on a tatty old sofa in this cluttered, cramped flat which every other day springs some _other_ maintenance problem but Astoria refuses to leave because it 'has a natural character'. Rain hammers down hard on the window; the candles balanced in the branches of the tree have long ago burnt out. He idly toys with strands of her curls. To bypass just how _right_ this feels - watching the fire with a woman, it's cloying and trite and naive and he does not know what to do with the knowledge that he might actually enjoy this, enjoy _her – _he once more points out the total idiocy of a woman her age hanging a stocking before the fireplace and laying mincepies and sherry at the hearth.

"Listen carefully, I'll try and introduce this rather radical concept to you," she had yawned. "Some of us have souls. Some of us _believe_. You know, in more than counting our money and practicing tossing our hair in the mirror."

Which is ridiculous. His hair is just _naturally_ this good, thanks.

Now, however, there is nothing but the sound of silence and slow, gentle breathing. _Finally ran out of insults?_ he wonders, before looking down and realising she's fast asleep.

_Ridiculous woman_, Draco thinks, leaning down and pressing his mouth to her bared shoulder.

It's cloying and trite and naive, but no-one's watching, so he'll do it anyway. No-one but the cat, and he doesn't seem to mind as he carefully eases himself from beneath Astoria's dead weight and creeping to the fireplace. He makes sure to take a hearty swig of the sherry and a bite from the mince-pie before slipping the package into her stocking. And she'll _see_ the empty glass, and she'll _see_ the bite marks, and she'll _find_ the earrings that he may, quite possibly, have marched through three different shops before finding the right pair – and he won't say a word, thank-you, because he's a _Slytherin_, not some blithering nit who still believes in Santa Claus.

It's cloying and trite and naive and stupid, and she _knows_ it's cloying and trite and naive and stupid. But maybe just once a year, when they take a break from all the shouting and cursing and swearing and fucking, it can work for them.

**t:- twelve days of Hogwarts**

It's Padfoot's idea, but James catches on within seconds, and of course the other chaps get the clue soon enough. They rap on doors, standing in front of studies and private quarters and even the staff room, trooping to each professor in turn. All of them stand there – Moony's face wan and smudged with ink, Wormtail standing on his toes to match them, Sirius tossing his hair out of his eyes, and he, of course, an arm looped around Padfoot and Wormy's shoulders – and start singing.

"_On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me – twelve lethifolds lurking, eleven snitches swooping, ten witches-a-winking, nine first-years-a-swotting, eight snakes-a-squirming, seven wands-a-whirling, six hags-a-hulking , FIVE QUIDDITCH CUPS, four snowy owls, three Cornish imps..."_

They're given smiles, indulgent chuckles, even - in Flitwick's case - a handful of Honeyduke's sweets each. They're dubbed as 'ingenious' and 'wonderful' and 'quite charming'. Such accolades are, however, _not_ granted for their other – equally creative, he'd like to point out – carols, which he and Sirius holler in the corridors right up until the moment when dear old Snapey whirls on his heels and attempts to hex them.

"_Jingle bells, Snivelly smells, he's greasy and he's foul...Oh come, Oh come, oh Snivellus, and let us wash your oily hair...Joy to the world! Slytherin stinks, let's chuuck them aall out noww..."_

_Those_ are the ones that loose them ten points apiece and land them all in detention for a week, disembowelling horned toads and scrubbing the toilets in Moaning Myrtle's bathroom. Evans tsks at him solidly all through Herbology.

Worth it for the look on Snape's face though.

**u:- unspoken**

It's silly to dwell, after all she has a very lovely father and a wonderful home, and some very nice people at the DA who don't seem to think she's quite so odd – or, if they do, are at least kind enough not to laugh at her too loudly – and so she should be happy. And she is. For the most part.

Mum liked Christmas. She always sang the most wonderful songs at Christmas.

Thoughtfully she draws out her wand – because Dad's never cared if she does magic at home and honestly, sometimes it seems rather _silly_ not to, at least not today – and spins it once, twice, thrice, until gold and silver stars wreathe themselves around the portrait of her mother that adorns her bedroom wall. The effect is, she has to admit, is quite beautiful; her room glimmers with starlight, Mum's smile shimmers. Mum always liked beautiful things.

She doesn't say Merry Christmas. She doesn't need to, you know. One day there'll be plenty enough time for them to say all the things they never had a chance to; and besides, Mum knows she means it anyway.

**v:- vanquished**

The day before the holidays begin, the first prototype of the Extendable Ears is tested on the seventh year boys' dormitory. While Penelope is giving their brother his Christmas present.

"Well yes, Penny, I agree it's beautiful wrapping paper, but why are you _wearing_ it? And what on earth are you wearing under – _oh_."

Unaccountably, the Weasley twins are incapable of enjoying even a morsel of their Christmas dinner this year.

**w:- waiting**

One day, Neville thinks, one day they'll look at him with something more than this polite, blank stare that shows nothing more than a complete absence of anything within. One day they'll spend Christmas at home, with a turkey cooked by the three of them laughing and spilling and getting in each other's way, rather than in this joyless ward. One day she'll give him hand-knitted scarves and bottles of bubble bath he really didn't want, rather than these empty wrappers he keeps pasted in countless books – for she never lets him leave without pressing them into his hands, and he will never, never discard them.

One day, maybe, but not yet.

"Goodbye," he whispers. Now that he is old enough, brave enough, he reaches over and presses a kiss against Mum's paper-thin cheek, Dad's greying hair. When he was younger Gran used to stop him – Mum is easily frightened, see, and she would grab with sudden, scared movements – but he no longer listens. Instead he allows Mum to clutch her bird-like hands to his back as if she won't let go. He wishes she wouldn't. "I love you both."

"Are you ready, Neville?"

He looks up and smiles at Luna, Luna who never finds anything strange, who quite gently offered her hand to Dad and allowed him to take it, trembling, to turn it over and over as if searching for something hidden.

"Yeah, I'm ready."

One day, maybe, they will have the life they want, the life they always deserved. But not yet.

**x:- xmas morning**

"Mum! _Dad_!_ MUM!"_

A yawn, a stretch, as she blinks the sleep out of her eyes to see her youngest son standing there, all blinking eyes and too-big pyjamas. "Good morning, sweetheart."

"Merry Christmas, you mean!" The six year old fairly vibrates with excitement as he clambers up onto their bed. "Can we open our presents yet, _please_ can we open the presents yet?"

"Five more minutes, Ron. Five more minutes and then we can – "

"Mum, Dad, are you awake?"

Percy hovers eagerly, clutching hand-wrapped presents and blinking without the use of his glasses. "Can you open my present for you first? _Please_?"

"Oh heavens..." Arthur manages to prop himself into some sort of seated position, for a moment dislodging Ron who clambers, indigently, back into the safety of his mother's embrace. "Alright Percy. Come sit here on the bed next to me and show me what you've – "

"Oh, is it a pile-on?"

"_Excellent_."

"Wait!" But then as you might expect, you can sooner stop a shooting star than her twin sons. Two vague ginger blurs speed towards her, a streak of fierce pain shoots through her legs as they make landing. Ron is toppled to the floor; Percy squeaks and drops his present.

"_Boys_!"

"Merry Christmas Mum!"

"Merry Christmas Dad!"

"You _oafs_! You made me drop their present!"

"Oh, are we handing out presents? We already opened ours."

"Mum! Dad! You'll never guess what Hagrid sent me!" Another curly head round the door; Charlie's fairly levitating with excitement. "We were studying them in Care of Magical Creatures and I told him about them – have either of you ever seen a Niffler before – "

"Charlie, don't let it loose!"

"That was their _Christmas present_!"

"Oh pipe down Perce."

"Daddy, catch me, _catch me_!"

"_Oof!_" A second soaring blur and a grunt of pain; apparently Arthur's less adept at catching a speeding Ginny than one might believe. "Alright, that's _definitely_ one of the slats that are broken. Here, Ginny, let Daddy just get up for a moment and find his wand – "

"_Hug mee_!"

"Muum..."

"Oh, here sweetheart, just climb back up here – yes, pinch it hard darling, it'll stop bleeding soon."

"Sorry Ronniekins."

"Don't make fun of your – _owch_! That thing has my watch! Charlie!"

"Sorry Mum."

"Mum, Dad?" Bill edges in around the door, eyeing the carnage. "Cup of tea?"

This, then, is Christmas morning. To their knowledge, Molly and Arthur have never once been in danger of oversleeping.

**y:- youth**

Sometimes it's hard to believe this young boy with the dancing green eyes and the hair that sticks up in the most unusual of ways is the same baby he briefly cradled in his arms all those years ago. Albus watches as the child stumbles into the Great Hall, eyes as round as Galleons, to see the magnificent feast spread out before him. He is not perfect – he catches Harry snickering into his trifle as the Weasley twins drop several live white mice down the back of poor Percy's jumper – but he is happy, and that is far more important. He watches as the boy pulls crackers, throws food across the table to land into his friends' open mouths, join in a spirited chorus of 'I Saw Three Brooms'. Watches the delight and wonder in his eyes. The boy is happy, and what right does he have to take that from him?

He will think these thoughts next year, and the year after that, and the year after that; until he sees not a boy but a young man, awkward and bashful, dancing stiffly with a girl under the whole school's hungry gaze. This, then, will be the boy's life if he speaks now; the constant hero, the demanded, the craved, the ever-watched. Some golden idol that bears no resemblance to the man, the boy. He shakes his head thoughtfully, watches the lad listen to something spoken by his friend Ron, splutter, and then laugh. It is still a boy's laugh; rich and joyful and so very young.

No. It is Christmas, after all. Let him have this. Let him, for now, have these moments.

**z: - zero hour**

Alecto invites him down for Christmas dinner.

He declines, because that's what they expect him to do, and he can see the relief dying in her eyes without even having to resort to Legilimency. She fears him, both she and her brother, they fear what unknown sins he has committed to win the trust of the Dark Lord; and yet she hates him too. They all do: all these mediocre seekers of glory and power, who lie to themselves that they truly understand their Master, that they alone know his heart, they resent him, this unknown quantity. They hate him. And the others – Minerva, Filius, Pomona, all the great and the good – they, too, hate him. Perhaps they always will.

He's used to isolation. It's been his sole companion for some time. A man who needs companions for strength is always weak, for in the end they will always leave him.

Nonetheless, he cannot help but muse as he turns back into his study – the shadows in the room's corners, it seems, have never been more pronounced than they are this evening, the chairs never more empty, the air never more cold – if a man has to endure company, it should be on a night such as this.

While he pours himself a tumbler of Firewhisky the portraits watch him – some narrowly, some wearily, some with naked curiosity at this interloper in their midst. And over his desk, one man watches him with eyes that are old and weary and blue as the sky. A whole lifetime's worth of compassion pours out to him from those eyes. It's almost painful to behold.

He turns away, a stiff jerk, stares with empty eyes at the door. He cannot bear to see the man watch him like that.

"It cannot, I pray, be too much longer," the old man's voice comes from behind him. "It will be over soon, and swiftly. You have been so brave, Severus, so very brave. I cannot tell you just how proud I am of you."

He wants to scream, to shout, to rip the portraits from the walls and scatter the books far and wide, to tell Dumbledore he doesn't want his _honour_, his _pride_. But somehow he finds he cannot. When he finally turns back there's a small smile on his lips, and his eyes are damp.

"Merry Christmas Albus."

"Merry Christmas, Severus."

-o-


End file.
